The Alliance for Networking Visual Culture recently released Scalar, described as a “born-digital, open source, media-rich” venue for scholarly publishing. The idea behind Scalar is to give authors a place to publish extended work that takes advantage of the possibilities of digital technologies.

Scalar is also the result of extensive collaboration among some pretty impressive groups. So if what the platform can do doesn’t impress you, perhaps you can give it some credit (and some more development time) for the admirable folks who are behind its development.

However, most scholars will likely stick with the bread-and-butter of peer-reviewed monographs and journals, at least for the time being. Those with a taste for the exotic (or in positions that allow them to take more adventurous turns in their scholarly work), however, will likely be testing out these new options more and more.